Two Years.

I can’t believe you are already two years old.

It’s hard to even wrap my mind around the fact that two years and a day ago I wasn’t a parent.  I wasn’t who I am today.  So many changes have happened in our lives in what seems like such a short amount of time.  Recently I found this snippet, and while it doesn’t all apply to ‘us’, most of it does, and it always warms my heart to read it:

I felt you. You were a pea. Then a lemon. Then an eggplant. I followed advice. I read twelve books. I quit coffee. Could you tell I was scared? I talked to you, sang to you... I wasn't ready. But then you were here. Ten toes. Eight pounds. Love. Big fat love. I held you. I fed you. I realized that I would spend my life doing things to make you happy -- and that that would make me happy. And then there are the times I want to give up. You've made me rethink my sanity. You've made me want to fall on my mother's feet and tell her that I get it. But then you smile and you say my name -- and you grab my hand with those little fingers. We're growing together. We are seeing the world like it's new. I will open my heart and love will rain down all over you. You'll giggle, and I'll do it all over again. And we will walk hand in hand. Until you let go. I made you, but you made me a mother."

- Unknown

I feel like you have grown up so much since the last time I wrote.  Some things are still the same.  You still love your sister with all your heart.  Even when she has your toys, she is your favorite person in the entire world.  You two share these magical giggles that is almost like your own secret little language.  No one can make either of you laugh as hard, or genuinely as each other.  I love it.  You love taking care of your sister too.  If she has fallen asleep on the floor, you will put a blanket, or anything close to resembling one, over her.  If you find her binky, regardless if she needs it or not, you will bring it to her, and try to give it to her.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  If she is crying, and you can see that I am stressing over it, you will try to comfort her.  Throughout the day, you give her more hugs and kisses than your father and I get on any given day in the week.

Size wise, you don’t seem much different to me, but according to your doctor, you have grown, so I guess I have to believe them.  You are still very petite and slender.  You and your sister are about the same weight.  You have dirty blonde hair that is getting longer—another thing I don’t notice really, until I look at pictures of you a year, or a month ago, and wonder when it all grew to be so long.  The ends have started to curl up, and leave you with precious little ringlets.  I love them.  I fear that they won’t last much longer than your “baby” stage in life, but I can hope.  Your hair, much like you, is a force to be reckoned with.  You hate it being brushed, and you hate it being put up into any sort of pony tail, but you also hate it being in your eyes, and you are always brushing it away.  Your hands are always in your hair, and your hair is always a mess.  There isn’t much I can do about it, so I just let it go for now.  Your eyes are still big and beautiful, but they are changing.  They are no longer blue.  There are starting to be little flecks of some other color.  I can’t quite tell if it is green or brown, and only time will tell.

You have (mostly) graduated from your highchair when we go out to eat.  For a few short months, you allowed us to use a booster seat with you, but now you refuse.  You don’t care if sitting in a regular chair means that your nose can barely rest on the table top, you want to be a big girl!  Most the time you stay seated, and are pretty well behaved.  You’re still trying to master eating with silverware, so it’s still a mess, but even a highchair couldn’t fix that.

The places that we frequent for dinner often always remember you.  When we go to Chili’s we have a waitress that we request every time.  She has literally watched you grow up.  She is one of the reasons that you started to finally chill out at night when you were a few months old because she suggested a remedy that seemed to work.  You sometimes get toted around the restaurant, and sometimes taken near the kitchen, so you can be shown off.  You love the attention.  Another place we go, Daddy always takes you to the counter to pay.  You stand on his knee, and hand them the bill and credit card.  Once the receipt is printed, Daddy fills it out, and then you sign it, and hand it back to them.  When we leave, you say (scream) goodbye to everyone and wave.  We didn’t know that they even remembered you until we were getting ready to leave, and overheard one of them say, “Watch this, this little girl pays the bill every time, it’s so cute!” Everyone loves you. 

You are tough as nails.  You fall down, you get back up and brush it off, if you can even be bothered to do that much, and just keep on going.  You only really cry when you don’t get something you want, or you get in trouble.  Usually a lot of high-pitched screaming is also involved.  No one likes that.  Unfortunately, you seem to have inhabited your parent’s klutziness.  I’m hoping that a lot of it is still you getting to know your body.  You love to run, and dance, and jump.  Well, kind of jump.  It’s more of a hop if you’re on your own, or you really nail it when you get to hold on to something.  You love to be thrown around, and rough house with us.  You love to go to the park, and climb on all the equipment, but you seem very hesitant to go down the slides.  You love the swings though.  When you see them all we hear is shrill screams of joy, “Wings!  Wings!”

Your vocabulary has expanded a lot.  You can now form sentences, and sing songs.  I could go on for hours with all the cute things you say now.  It seems like writing them out, loses a lot of the cute though because I just can’t get the same effect of when the words actually come out of your mouth.  You have turned out to be amazingly polite and giving.  You know ‘thank you’, and ‘you’re welcome’, and sometimes you even say ‘please’.  We’re still working on ‘you’re welcome’ a little bit because sometimes you say it before you say ‘thank you’, when you’re not the person that is supposed to be saying it, or you say, ‘I ‘melcome.’  If someone sneezes (or coughs, or makes any noise, really) you always say ‘bless you!’  Sometimes you will even check to see if they are ok.  Such a sweet girl.

We recently started taking you to baby story time at the library.  You love it.  It is only half an hour, but a few stories are read, and songs are sung.  Afterwards, you get to color and play with sensory items.  You aren’t super social yet, but you really seem to enjoy it, even if we don’t know any of the songs, or the people there.

Today we had your birthday party.  It wasn’t anything big, just a few friends, and a few family members.  You wanted Tinker Bell, so that was the theme.  I worked for a few days to make you Tinker Bell, and you loved it.  I made you a little green dress, and very glittery tutu that you strutted around in.  There was glitter everywhere.  You were the most perfect little birthday princess.  I think really enjoyed yourself this year.  You were so sweet when opening your presents.  Most were in gift bags, so you would take out the tissue paper, and hand a piece to everyone around, telling them “thank you” every time you did.  It took you forever to open your presents, because every time you took one thing out of the bag, that was it, you wanted to play with that thing right then, but there were more presents, so we had to keep taking things away from you, and show you that there were more!  We did cupcakes this year, instead of a cake for you.  I think that was better.  It was a lot less messy, but you still ended up in the bathtub after.  We had been practicing singing ‘Happy Birthday’ for a week or two before your birthday, but you seemed unfazed when it was sang to you.  When we went to dinner, a while later, we had them sing to you then, too, and you didn’t seem to enjoy it then either… but you still love singing the song.

I love you my messy-haired little girl.  I can’t wait to see where the next year brings us.

Love,

Momma

Eight Months.

Eight months.  Wow.  (Here is where I will skip all the stuff I write every month about how I can’t believe how fast you’re growing up on me!)

You are a force to be reckoned with.  That is for sure.  You are incredibly mobile, and all over the place.  Your favorite place to scope out is the DVD shelf.  That is probably the biggest no-no in this house.  Daddy takes a LOT of pride in his DVDs (cases and organization included) and you just looooove to take them off the shelf and chew on them.  He pretty much freaks out if anything is wrong with them, so you are moved often, but you always go back.  You don’t like to be moved either.  You realize your hard work and you get super angry when we move you away from whatever it is you are doing.  You also love to chew on wires, and pretty much anything you can, so you are moved a lot.  Lucky for us, we can usually distract you with cuddles and love, and you calm down pretty quickly.

Every morning I put you in your playpen in front of the fish.  You love to watch them swim around.  This allows me to get Quinn changed, get her situated, get myself situated, and get you taken care of in that half of the house.  It’s nice.  I hope you continue to love fish when you get older.  They are so relaxing to look at.  We have a few baby fish in there, Quinn likes to point them for you, and tell you how cute they are.

Recently, you have started babbling and making a lot more noise than you used to.  Most of it is just coos and caas, but there are some mommas, dadas, and nanas in there.

You have had a few milestones this month.  You finally figure out how to sit up on your own, and you can now sit up, and stay up unassisted.  Because of this, we finally ditched your baby bath tub, and you could not be happier.  You love to splash and slide around the full-sized bathtub.  Sometimes I wonder who is more wet when the bath is over, you, who has been sitting in the water, or daddy, who was bathing you, but in the direct path of your constant splashing.  I can’t wait to get you into a pool, I think you will love swimming.  The way you sit yourself up is hilarious sometimes.  You put yourself into the full splits, and push up from the middle.  Maybe you will be a little gymnast someday, because I’ve even caught you sleeping in the splits.  We have also tried giving you food, because you seem really interested in whatever we are eating.  Since your digestive system still isn’t in full form yet, we can’t quite just hand you what’s on our plates, but every time we’ve tried to give you food, you’re not a fan.  We’ve tried avocados and bananas, and you will take one bite, crinkle your nose, and not let any more in your mouth.  Your sister, however, has tried to feed you her food several times, and you’ve had a taste of a French fry or two, and while you seem to enjoy them in your mouth, your stomach doesn’t appreciate all the grease, and you end up sick.

When things make you happy, you tense up, get a big silly grin, put your arms out, and shake.  I don’t know why.  It scared me the first few times, but it’s funny now.  A lot of things make you excited and happy, so you’ve been doing this a lot lately.  You seem to just love life in general, and not much can make you upset, you even (still) laugh in your sleep.

Love you smiley girl.

Love,

Momma

Seven Months.

Where do I even begin?  I feel like so much has happened in the last month.  (Don’t I say this every month?)

It’s official.  You were teething.  You have teeth.  Not just one tooth, but two absolutely adorable teeth.  Now that they have broken through, we have less of the miserable version of you, but you still seem to wake up often through the night.  Daddy says that thanks to the lack of sleep, I’m starting to hallucinate, and I’m pretty sure he’s starting to think I’m crazy.  Give me a little break, ok?  You are also biting with your little teeth, and it HURTS!  You bite so often that every time I go to feed you, and Quinn is around, she feels the need to remind you, “No bite!”  I appreciate her effort, but it doesn’t seem to phase you.  I hope you grow out of it soon.  I really don’t want to have to stop nursing you.  I’m trying to learn your “clues” but you’ve thrown me a curve ball this week, and have tricked me into thinking you’re hungry, so I go to feed you, just to have you chomp down.  Ouch!

You are well on your way to crawling.  You get up on your hands and knees a lot of the time.  Sometimes you even get up on your toes and hold it there, kind of like pushups.  You are a strong little one, that’s for sure.  You can stay in that position a lot longer than I can.  You are also sitting up for longer periods of time.  You no longer have to be propped up constantly, and you can usually last about a minute on your own before you slouch to the side, or ease back.  You are starting to try and catch your self as well.  When you roll over, you often try to prop yourself up, but you aren’t quite there yet.  You’re persistent though, so I have no doubts that by next month you will have it down.

You are finally big enough for the bouncer, and now that we have officially retied the swing, and you are too big and too wiggly for the bouncy chair, it has been a semi-relief.  You only tolerate it for short amounts of time, but it gets you less mobile.  I think that’s why you can only tolerate for so long, you start having fun with all the gadgets, and then you realize, “hey, I can’t get out of this thing!”  It at least gives me a little break.

You have clearly said “momma” and “dada” now.  Mostly it’s just babbles, but when you are upset, you always manage to cry out “momma” and not “dada” so that’s a relief to me!  At least someone says “momma” on a regular basis in this house!

You are growing like a weed!  At your 6-month check up (that was closer to you being 7 months) you were 19 pounds!  That’s only 3 pounds lighter than your sister is.  You are wearing mostly 9 to 12 month old clothes, so you are going through what I have stored quickly.  I have some really cute outfits for spring and summer, but this year the weather is super strange, so I hope they will still fit when the season is right.

You still aren’t the most awesome sleeper when it comes to the nighttime hours.  You are usually up every 2 hours.  Luckily, you are very easy to get back to sleep, I just wish I got more of it at a time.  You are definitely a morning baby.  Usually when 8 o’clock rolls around, you are up and at ‘em.  Cheery, and ready to play for the day.  Again, lucky for me, you at least take naps during the day to make up for what you’re not getting at night, so most days I get a few moments where I can take a deep breath.

You are still so full of smiles, and not many things can wreck your mood.  You still don’t like poopy diapers, and trust me; I don’t like your poopy diapers either.  I want to cry, right along with you, especially when you leak all over.  I thought I was doing a lot of laundry before, but it seems like I am doing laundry every day.  You just love to make messes.  Nothing gives you more joy than your sister.  I love walking into the room hearing you both squeal and squee with joy.  Nothing could ever make a momma happier.   Sometimes in the mornings when Quinn has come into our bedroom, both of you will be in the bed with us (sometimes with daddy, and sometimes he’s gone off to work.)  I love watching you two cuddle together.  Sometimes, even if I am super exhausted, I just sit and stare at the both of you.  You make me so proud.  Sometimes I have to fight the urge to scoop you up, hold you tightly in my arms, and tell you how much I love you.  You will probably never know how much I love you.  Even I’m amazed at how much I can love both you and your sister.

Love,

Momma

Six Months.

Half a year, already?  Stop growing up!

You are such a sweet girl, and still (even despite recent occurrences) the calmest baby I have ever known.  Everybody just loves you, and you have started smiling back at most people instead of scowling at them, as you will forever be known for.  (It’s ok to be cautious.)  Everyone loves your little chunky everything, and finally someone other than family noticed your little heart mark between your eyes.  I love it.  It some ways, I hope you keep it because it is a unique mark, which makes you stand out.  On the other hand, it’s a unique mark that makes you stand out, and people will pick on you for that, which I hate; there is nothing wrong with being different.

Your awesome little mohawk has finally made its last appearance.  Your hair is starting to be too long (or too heavy, I’m not sure) but now you just have normal baby hair.  We did get a few good pictures of it while you had it though.  You rocked it like a star!

You are so happy all the time.  When you were younger, you used to scowl at everyone all the time, even me.  Now you laugh and giggle all the time.  Most of the time, we (momma and daddy) can make you laugh, but no one can get your going like Quinn.  You laugh at each other and get into giggle fits every day.  I love watching you two so much.  You definitely love to laugh, you even laugh in your sleep sometimes, which is hilarious (even though it’s two or three in the morning.)  There are certainly worse sounds to wake up to.  If someone is holding you, and you get excited, you kick your feet like crazy.  Sometimes it is so difficult to hold on to you, you just want to joyfully squirm out of our arms!  Happy, happy girl.

You haven’t been sleeping so great lately.  Not really sure why, you used to at least give me 5 or 6 hours where I had a chance to sleep solid, but now it’s every few hours, if that, and its killing me.  Sometimes feeding you will satisfy you, but lately, it’s getting harder and harder to figure out what you want.  We’ve even resorted to giving you Tylenol when nothing else will work, and 90% of the time, that will work.  You are probably teething, but you’ve been “teething” (drooling and chewing on everything) for months, with no real progress on teeth.  Quinn was the same way though, and she didn’t actually get teeth until she was 10 ½ months old, but she never acted as miserable as you are.  We go to the doctor in two weeks for your checkup.  I doubt they will tell me anything is wrong, and they will probably just brush it off as teething, but I will mention it anyway.

You had your first Christmas last month.  We didn’t really know what to expect.  When Quinn had her first Christmas, she was almost a year old, and she barely enjoyed it.  You did ok.  You didn’t unwrap anything, but you seemed to enjoy the toys that you got.  Some, ok most, of your toys you are sharing with your sister, and she seems to love them just as much as you do.  At this point, it’s really hard to separate toys for one child or the other, I promise, it won’t always be that way.

You have finally outgrown the beloved swing.  This may or may not be the cause for your continued upset at night.  You don’t nap half as much as you used to, and sometimes you cry and cry, and cry for your swing, but at this point, it’s just an expensive chair.  They don’t make the weight limit on those things near where they should be.  It’s been a hard transition for all of us.  Trust me.  ALL OF US.  You have a bouncy seat, which is ok, by your standards, and I’ve been letting you play around on the floor a lot more, which is occasionally ok, but neither of those places is suitable for you to fall asleep at.  Usually I have to rock you for a long time, and transfer you to the bouncy seat, or risk walking through the house and getting you to your crib.  Both of those adventures have a 75% failure rate, and you usually wake up, but at least if I make it to your crib, you will stare at your mobile for a bit and pretend you are sleeping long enough for me to take a shower, or deal with the dishes or laundry.  You’re a good sport.  Thanks for that.

Love,

Momma

Five Months.

Time is flying by way too fast for me.  You are almost half a year old, and it seems like just yesterday I was still pregnant with you.  Life is flying by too fast now that I think about it.  I feel like this month you’ve reached more milestones than I’d like to admit.

You are sleeping so much better.  Now, you usually go to bed around 9:30 or 10, and don’t wake up until 5:30 or 6.  One morning, you didn’t wake up until 7, I thought for a moment that maybe I had died, and gone to heaven!  I still really can’t complain.  I am just so glad that you are over that whole waking up every hour thing you had going on for a little bit.  You are usually super easy to get to sleep too.  If you don’t fall asleep eating, I can usually place you in your crib, turn your mobile on, and you will just lie there peacefully until you doze off.  On the mornings where you wake up a little bit before my body is ready to be awake with you (ok, every morning) I now just drag you into bed with me.  You’ve really outgrown your bassinet with your weight, and all your tossing, and kicking.  It may support you, but I don’t fully trust it.  You are a much better co-sleeper than your sister is.  She flips around, is restless all night, and usually ends up kicking us off our own bed.  Not you though.  You usually lay right where we put you, or cuddled up next to one of us, and stay there.  No feet in our faces, or elbows to the ribs in the middle of the night from you.  You are a little cuddler.

You have started “talking” a lot more than you had been.  I have so many videos of you trying to say things, they are so cute.  You are trying so hard.  I love it.  You said “momma” first, which, of course, made me super happy.  No other words yet, but you babble a ton.  When you aren’t happily babbling away, you still like to scream back and forth with your sister.  It’s not a bad scream; it is full of happiness and joy.  It’s actually funny to watch you two communicate.  It is never quiet around here!

Last weekend we took you to your very first photo-shoot!  We’ve been a little behind, and sadly, these are your first professional photos at almost 5 months old.  Unfortunately, there has been lack of time or funds, or both, and it never seemed to work out before now, and it’s only because Grandma Lynn gave me pictures for a Christmas present.  I wish we were loaded so we could have new pictures of you every month, but the eleven million pictures I take with my phone and camera will just have to do, for the most part.  The pictures didn’t go as well as planned.  Originally, we had planned to do an afternoon shoot, because none of us is morning people, but we were snowed out.  Our retake time was at 10 am on a Sunday.  Since it was in Tulsa, that means that we not only had to leave an hour before that, but everyone had to get ready, super early just to be out the door on time.  Again, none of us are morning people… and we had to get up super early.  Before the photos were even done: I had changed you at least six times, fed you three, both you and Quinn had thrown up all over yourselves, and us, and we were all exhausted.  In fact, you passed out before we were even done, so you ended up being in charge.  I have only seen some of the pictures so far; I just hope that even if we have no pictures where we are all smiling there is at least one with you and your gummy smile.  Your dad keeps teasing me that you’re getting teeth, and if nothing else was captured that day, I just hope it was that, because that is my favorite thing you do right now, and looking back at Quinn, teeth are cute, but the smile just isn’t the same.

So far, you haven’t been sick.  Which is a pretty huge feat for this family.  We’ve run you to the doctor a few times for things that concerned us, but so far, it has never actually been anything to worry about.  You have definitely had some weird stuff going on that always freaks me out, but never turns into anything.  This time you burst a blood vessel in your eye.  It started out on a Sunday night as about the size of a pinhead, and by Monday morning, it had quadrupled in size.  We took you to the doctor; they dropped some yellow stuff in your eye, put a black light on it, and said that you hadn’t scratched anything, and that it was like a bruise for your eyeball, so it would just heal with time.  It didn’t seem to bother you too much, but it looked so painful.  When you were born, you had something similar, so I hope it’s not just your eyes being super sensitive, and that it won’t continue to be an ongoing issue later in life.

After the doctor, we took you to see Santa.  You weren’t too sure of the big guy, but you tolerated him enough to get two pictures.  Quinn was scared of him this year, so we didn’t get one of you two together, but maybe next year.  Because of you two girls, I love Christmas more than I ever could have imagined.  Shopping for gifts for you guys to open Christmas morning is addicting as drugs.  Seriously, we’ve had a really hard time stopping.  We found a whole bunch of things that we thought you’d like, gave them all to the grandparents as suggestions, and were a little bummed that we didn’t save anything for us to get you.  It wasn’t a problem long, and we had a hard time not buying everything in sight.  This is probably one of the best Christmases that you will have, it’s a shame neither one of you will probably remember it.  We will take pictures though.

I know I talk about your hair a lot, it is just so awesome!  While we were at the doctor, the second time in two weeks, people remembered you because of your hair.  You are staring to be known as “that cute baby with the super cool hair that I love” by many of the nurses, nurses that don’t even work for your doctor.  Oh, by the way, you gained a pound in a little under a two-week span.  When we took you in to get your eye examined, you weighed 17 pounds!  Your sister only weighs 21 or 22 pounds, you are catching up with her, and I’m starting to wonder that even though you’re not Irish twins, if people are going to think, you are.  Right now, you two are pretty close, as close as a 5-month and a 20-month old can be, I guess.  You make each other laugh, and you both love to spend time together.  Sometimes in the morning, I put you both in bed with me, and we just have one big cuddle-fest.  Quinn loves to take care of you, and you love her paying attention to you.  Sometimes you two leave me out, but I love watching you all the same.

Love you my little Squidget.

Love,

Momma